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Jofa Recomended

R. Twerski's book is a direct address to the problem of spouse abuse in the Jewish community reveals what may have been closely kept dark secrets in many Jewish families, and offers urgently needed advice and direction.

In this article, Kaufman (author of Sins of Omission: The Jewish Community's Reaction to Domestic Violence [Westview Press, 2003]) reviews the literature published on the issue of domestic abuse in the Jewish community, including Julie Ringold Spitzer’s When Love in Not Enough: Spousal Abuse in Rabbinic and Contemporary Judaism (1985, 1991, 1995), A. Twerski’s The Shame Born of Silence: Spouse Abuse in the Jewish Community (1996), N. Graetz’ Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (1998), and most recently, When the Vow Breaks: Building a Response to Domestic Abuse in the Jewish Community (2005). This is a thorough review and constitutes preliminary, critical reading for any rabbi, lay leader, Jewish educator or counselor involved in cases of domestic or sexual abuse.

ADDITIONAL READING

Breaking the cycle of domestic violence and abuse poses unique problems for the Jewish community, owing to the internal divisions of politics, religious practice, and culture. However, creating strategies to work together based upon the shared values of Judaism can strip away those differences. Domestic Abuse and the Jewish Community: Perspectives from the First International Conference brings together an outstanding and diverse selection of notable presentations from the First International Conference on Domestic Abuse in the Jewish Community held in July 2003 in Baltimore, Maryland. The conference, entitled "Pursuing Truth, Justice, and Righteousness: A Call to Action," brought to the forefront the disturbing, many times hidden issue of domestic abuse within the Jewish community. Respected scholars, clergy, social service professionals, and survivors provide insightful presentations that lay an essential foundation for the building of a collaborative global Jewish movement to respond to this sensitive issue.

Industrial and organizational psychologist Kaufman looks at the structure and processes of the Jewish community to analyze how it, as a living organizational system, acknowledges and deals with spousal abuse and allocates funds for education, victim treatment, ad prevention.

The purpose of this book is to present the attitudes on wifebeating that can be found in Jewish tests. As Naomi Graetz shows, rabbinic responses to wifebeating in the Jewish community are not monolithic.

The article discusses the successful approach of Project S.A.R.A.H. (Stop Abusive Relationships At Home), a 12-year old project that was developed in New Jersey as a response to domestic violence in the Orthodox Community.

Goldberg discusses the central themes of Kolech's third international conference, "To Be a Jewish Woman". The conference was energized by discussions about the symbiosis between American and Israeli feminists, and demonstrated Kolech's strength as an advocate for women who charge men with sexual abuse and harassment, emphasizing the importance of creating safe spaces for victims to tell their stories.

This article examines texts that were composed more than 600 years ago in varied parts of the world and that attest to physical abuse of wives by Jewish husbands. The author maintains that that those texts were composed because someone earnestly undertook to address that violence. It shows this by rendering those texts into two dozen vignettes in which wives, their male relatives, and communal leaders sought to stop spousal violence

JSafe: The Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse-Free Environment works to promote a Jewish community in which all of its institutions and organizations conduct themselves responsibly and effectively in addressing the wrongs of domestic violence, child abuse and professional improprieties, whenever and by whomever they are perpetrated.